Parto's Golf Learning Center reaches out to golf enthusiasts

If you were to tell Tom Parteleno he is crazy, he probably wouldn’t disagree with you.

After all, he did leave a well-paying job as a golf pro at a course in Florida, where he worked roughly 15 hours a week, to operate a struggling course in Northeast Ohio and put in 20-hour days. But he doesn’t really seem to mind.

“It’s been a labor of love,” Parteleno said.

Parteleno and his wife, Tammy, of 16 years, own and operate Parto’s Golf Learning Center in the city. He’s a Struthers native, and she’s originally from McDonald, but they met in Florida.

“She’s pretty much crazy,” Parteleno said of his wife. “But she’ll do anything I ask her to do.”

The golf center is currently on the expanded five-year plan.

It started with a simple driving range and chipping area. Now, the patchwork complex features those, as well as a 9-hole par-3 course, putting green and nine more holes of miniature golf.

The whole place — about 25 acres, he said — sits nestled just off Route 616 near the Hubbard border. It’s a prime location, it’s affordable and it’s got something for everyone.

The only problem? It’s also empty.

“People don’t know we’re here, really,” Parteleno said. “I’ll get people who have lived in Hubbard their entire lives and they’ll ask if we just opened.”

Well, yes and no.

The facility has been there for five years. But the par-3 course is new this season. Parteleno said he opened the course on a trial basis last fall, but closed it due to weather shortly after. So this is the first people will get to play it.

That is, if anyone bothers to show up.

Read the story in Thursday’s Vindicator.